Did Saturo Iwata Stop The Release Of Goldeneye On XBLA?
Yes. According to Xbox 360 World magazine. Apparently everything between the rights holders of Goldeneye had been sewn up and the release of the updated Xbox LIVE version was imminent with even Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime behind the idea…that is until Nintendo head honcho Saturo Iwata stepped in stopped everything. Allegedly stating that under no circumstances can the Nintendo game be released on another platform.
Goldeneye developers Rare apparently offered to port the game to the Wii and make available all of their Nintendo back catalog available for the Virtual Console - probably referring to the first Perfect Dark and Banjo & Kazooie.
Xbox 360 world also claims that Nintendo has no rights to the title but that Activision, who does, backed down because of the possible threat that going forward without Nintendo’s blessing would damage their future business relationship with Nintendo.
Now all this is coming from a somewhat biased source, but if any bit of this is true…Nintendo is clearly holding strong to their tard ‘Us against everyone’ mentality. Hopefully we’ll get more than the usual PR tripe out of Nintendo about this soon. Fans want to know what the hell happened.
Scans from the magazine can be found below.
Source: Max Console